Imago Dei

Once upright, undistorted, mirror-clear
Where the first birdsong primal silence broke
Limning sweet limbs with love-lent loveliness;
Sky, and all glory bent to one small place
Till one enactment broke all time and space ..

Here now we crawl: broken, overwhelmed
Scrabbling amongst the dust
Scant, grimy, bent ..
Lost in the night, ourselves put out the lights
And drown in tears and call our tears a lie
And wake and ache and break, become the snake
Ourselves the hissing ugliness we fear ..

See the Restorer. Like a star come down
Into the orbit of this broken rock
Life, being bent on death, light down to dark
Folding into himself our flagging flesh
Being the message and the messenger
Being himself the song we could not sing
Being the glory couched invisible:
Drinker of sorrow down into the grave
Being the Mirror, Window, truth and Light
One arrow shot by God into the dark
To swallow up all darkness with His light,
To polish us till we once more reflect.

So we are come. Until His coming, come,
Let your light shine: His beauty born in you
As into holy wholeness you are wrought
Till you bear fruit as love has planted there,
Until He sees His face, full fair, in you.

The Coin

Sometimes I longed to go back home, to tell my parents I was wrong and ask their forgiveness. But I knew there was no turning back, I had not only disgraced them, I had broken the law of my people and turned my back on God. For such as I there could be no forgiveness. I was moderately rich – enormously rich by the standards of my home village – but in their eyes it was unholy, ill-gotten wealth. I had married a beautiful woman, a foreigner, who laughed to scorn the few remnants of Judaism I still clung to, and then ran off with a Greek merchant who was ten times richer than I. I had laughed through my pain, scorning myself for a fool who should have known better, and remembering the old story of Samson and Delilah. I wasn’t the first man to be fooled by a pretty face, it simply joined me to a vast company of fools through the ages who had been so easily seduced.

I had friends, Greeks and Romans who did business here, and a few liberal Jews from Herod’s party as well, we traded, we partied, we gossiped at the baths, but though their company passed the empty hours, they were none of them men I trusted. If it served their interest to do so, they would stick a knife in my back without a moment’s hesitation – and not just metaphorically. I was sick at heart and weary of life, and had not yet reached my twenty-eighth birthday. At night I would dream of that little Galilean village that smelled of fish, and my weary parents who had loved me so much, and I would wake up in tears. At daybreak I would go back to my business and trade twice as ruthlessly as before, because I was angry with the world. But most of all I was angry with myself.

This was my frame of mind when I had to go to Galilee on business. I always carefully avoided the area where my family lived, but there were plenty of other places where I could go down to the waterfront and recapture some of the feelings of my boyhood. And that was where I was heading when I saw the crowd. I had left my fine horse at the inn, so, seized with curiosity, I made my way down and mingled with the crowd.

They were focused on a young man, not much older than myself, who was speaking. I did not understand what he was saying, something about a shepherd and his sheep, I had obviously arrived in the middle of the story, but his voice was compelling, so I stopped to listen. “suppose a woman had ten coins, and she loses one ..” As I listened to the story, I was suddenly reliving a day in my childhood. My mother had had such coins, I doubt if it were as many as ten, we were very poor, but she treasured those coins, if our father were taken ill, or there were no fish in the nets, they would be all that stood between us and starvation. And one day, just like in the Teacher’s story, she lost one. How we hunted for that one pathetic coin! (I thought guiltily of my saddlebags full of money). In the end we found it, outside, covered in mud and stinking filth. I would have thrown it away in disgust, but my mother would do no such thing. “Do you think it is worth any less because it is dirty?” she scolded me, and proceeded to clean it up. She was so glad to get her coin back, even in that state.

But what was the Teacher saying? “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents ..” I thought of myself as a man of many coins, but now I saw that I, myself, was that one coin, misplaced, and now caked with the filth of the world. But that didn’t mean I was unwanted. I could still be cleaned up.

I didn’t stay to hear any more. I knew what I had to do. First I must make my way to that little village and ask my parents to forgive me. Then, whatever their response was, I must return to Jerusalem and take my sin offering to the temple. God still wanted me! And as I turned to go, the teacher turned his head and looked straight at me. He smiled, and in that smile I felt the love of God welcoming me home ..

A cup of cold water

I have so much to learn before I am ready to become the king God has called and anointed me to be. I have learned to trust my shepherd-God, and I have learned to lead men, not just sheep, and I have learned that if I am to be treated as worthy of kingship when my turn comes, even now I must honour the worth of the kingship of the present ruler, even though he is Saul, my bitterest enemy. But tonight I learned a new lesson, and my heart is overwhelmed.

It all began with nostalgia. I was tired of being cooped up in a cave in the wilderness, and let’s be honest here, I was bored. Sometimes even being scared is better than that, when I am in danger I know that God is with me, protecting me. He has promised me the kingship, he will hold me safe in the hollow of his hand until every last part of his promise is fulfilled. But where is he in the midst of unrelenting tedium? And the wilderness is so tedious. Nothing to do but keep hidden from Saul, talk to my men, and gaze out at the cruel sunlight by day, the bitter stars at night. I am so tired of it—the best years of my youth skulking in the desert. Then I remember the story of Joseph, and I acknowledge that the ways of God are strange, but the promises of God will never fail.

But today had been a bad day, not for any special reason, but just because I had run out of reasons for it to be good day. Even the water tasted flat and dusty – well, truth be told, it always does taste flat and dusty here, but usually I am too glad to slake my thirst to worry about such niceties. After all, I am a soldier as well as a shepherd and a singer (and who knows what else I may well become before the end of this perplexing journey? But it was a bad day, and nothing would make me happy, and at last even the taste of water irritated me past bearing. When a man is angry with the flavour of water, you know that his heart is truly sick with frustration.
I thought back to my childhood, only a short while ago in years, but the distance is immeasurable. I remembered the freedom of the fields around Bethlehem, the slant of the light on the hills, the very smell of the place. I remembered the sweet, cold water, and, longing to recapture that freedom and joy, I said aloud, “ Oh that someone would get me a drink of water from the well near the gate of Bethlehem!” And then, like a foolish child, I thought no more about it.

I was so self-absorbed I did not even notice them leave. Only later did I learn of their exploits, how the three of them – just three! – fought their way through the Philistine lines, reached the well, and brought me back a cup of cold water. It was madness, utter glorious madness, and when they returned, with the marks of battle on them, carrying that ridiculous water skin, I realised what they had done. I was so ashamed. They had risked their lives and laboured hard, just to satisfy my childish whim. What had I done? What had I become? Dear heaven, is that who they thought I was?

I could not drink it. They had laid their whole live on the line, and it seemed to me that it was no longer water, but their blood. I know there are kings in other lands who feed off their people, but may I never be such a one! My God is not like that, and I will not be either.And in that moment I saw what I had never before understood. The Law says that when we bring our sacrifice to the temple, we offer it to God and then feast on part of it ourselves. God does not feed on us, he feeds us. He himself in some sense is our living bread, he himself takes the foul and tainted water of our lives and turns it into the wine of the bridegroom. Our bread. Our wine. Our life. For if God takes a little from us, it is only in order that he may give to us all the more. And we must feed on him, or else we die.

I looked at the water skin. That water was a holy thing, it had been bought for me at a price I could neither deserve or repay. It is not for such as I to drink of holy things. Reverently, prayerfully, I poured it on the ground. Never, never must I ask for the heart’s blood of my people. Even in the dark, my men knew that I was weeping.

In Magdala

It lay there forgotten, and she never even missed it. She had never even known it had a name. For her, it didn’t. But she knew that she felt better – the pain was further away, far enough away now, in fact, that it could easily be got rid of altogether, at least for a while! Over time, with some experimentation, she got better at doing that.

Life was much more fun now. Maybe she didn’t feel joy quite as sharply, but she certainly didn’t feel all the hurt, and she didn’t have everything she wanted to do being constantly interrupted by those voices in her memory screaming “Shouldn’t!” all the time. She could sleep in without guilt. She could stay up late, go to parties, have too much to drink – all without more than a moment of guilt – which she could explain to herself as “Old habits die hard”. An easier life was a better life – right?

And then there were men. One could get so much from them if one simply didn’t care – about anything. Working on her own image to keep her market value intact was probably the thing she put the most effort into. It was an investment with rich rewards – as long as you didn’t care.

It was not-caring which was the key to everything else, and not-caring was a lot easier without that other bit that had caused her so much trouble in the past. Of course, that left an empty space, but a girl learns ways to fill the empty spaces. And she was smart enough to provide for the future, too. Getting ahead was important: making money, having a glamorous lifestyle, being a good-time girl who got noticed. Things got a little wilder as the years passed, but she stayed in control.

She was somewhere between thirty and forty when she realised she had lost control. She wasn’t sure exactly how old she was – she had lied about her age so many times that she no longer remembered the truth. Something was wrong, something was horribly wrong, but she had no idea what to do. All the things she had invited in to fill the empty spaces had not only filled them, but were taking over the rest of her as well. She was a puppet, just a soulless puppet, and something else was pulling the strings. Even though she had given up caring, some corner of her mind was screaming in terror.

She could never afterwards quite recall the sequence of events. It was as if her mind was no longer quite her own. Nothing was clear until the strange day when she found herself face to face with Him. It was as if the whole universe was holding its breath when He looked into her eyes, and straight through them and down into the deep places where she was too frightened to look for herself. And she knew that He was offering her a choice, and there was only one possibleanswer, even if she didn’t really understand what it meant There was no way she could speak, but she said “YES!”with her eyes, even while those other voices were roaring NO in her head. It was enough. He spoke again, and it was like her innermost self was being wrenched wide open .. something was leaving that didn’t want to leave .. and she wanted it to go, even if it had come to feel like part of herself .. she had no idea where she was, or who she was ..

The sun was shining, but the grass still carried the perfume of yesterday’s rain. A light breeze caressed her face. The world was utterly still, and utterly beautiful. She could feel the breath move in her lungs, and the solidity of the earth beneath her feet. All was well .. only one thing was missing, one small, but somehow very important thing.

His fingers lifted her chin and He was looking into her, but now it didn’t hurt at all. “Mary,” he said, making her name sound like a smile. He breathed on her, and she felt His word, and His breath meet somewhere deep inside her, recreating. She was whole, she was well, all things had been restored, and she knew with utter joy that the new life which she had been given belonged to Him forever.

Here let me have my Heaven

Here let me have my Heaven, where the lame,
The halt, the blind, the naked and ashamed
Are gathered at the low gate’s blood soaked frame.

Here let me be as one with those who know
They have no right to claim, no right to go
And yet they come because You told them so.

Not where the neat, clean-handed pious dwell
(Those who have practised carefulness so well)
Here, with the broken, is Immanuel.

Here, beyond law and doctrine’s argued place
Here, where the huddled outcasts find their space,
Here let me drink from undiluted grace.

Here let me learn to love with hands of pain,
Here, beyond fear, acknowledging my stain
Until all things are made complete again.

Starlight

It is cool and peaceful out here on the hill, under the stars. The summer night folds round me like a cloak and I feel at rest. The love of God wraps around me also, and I wonder what it means.

For hundreds of years, every Jewish girl has dreamt of being the one who would bear the special promised child. But that was a dream, just like every poor village girl, the whole world over dreams of marriage to a rich man of high rank so that she never has to draw water of sweep floors again. We dream our dreams, we say, ‘what if?’, then we settle down and marry our good, sensible husbands, and live the life we always expected to live.

But what do you do when the dreams walk into the living day? What do you do when, one day, in the midst of household chores, a being of sheer glory appears in front of you and tells you that, out of all the girls who have ever lived, all the weary, dreamy eyed, careless maidens who have ever wistfully glanced up at the stars, you, for no possible logical reason, are to be the one who is the bearer of the Promise? Well, I know now. The very first thing you do, once the angel leaves and normal feeling returns to your body, is stand there and say, like every other person who’s ever met an angel, I suppose, is “Why me?” Only later, when you start to realise all the practical implications, do you start to ask, “How am I going to do this?”

Now I wonder both questions all the time. The first three months sped by quickly. My mother sent me off to Elizabeth’s and I stayed for the birth of her John – another miracle baby, though not the same kind of a miracle. At least he is a normal human baby, and they know who his father is. I was so busy there that there was no time for dreaming. And it gave Joseph and my parents time to understand as well. I don’t think my parents knew what to believe till Joseph told them about his dream. Joseph is not the sort of person who has holy dreams; he is the kind sensible village husband that every right-minded girl hopes she’ll end up with in real life.

And now I’m back, and I’m here, and at the end of the day I gaze up at the stars. I remember how Father Abraham was told to look up at the stars. Was he forever wondering, “Why me?” I remember how Father Jacob lay under the stars, with only a stone for a pillow, and saw so many angels. One was almost too much for me, Jacob must have been a very strong person, maybe that’s why he had to wrestle with God Himself before he learned weakness? I am not Abraham, I am not Jacob. I am just a girl whose mother has to remind her to finish sweeping while I stand rooted with amazement that this child could ever come to be.

And I remember the prophet Daniel said something about the wise shining like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars forever .. I am not a shining star. I am a little household candle, scared some days that a small wind will blow me out altogether. Yet God has placed a light inside me, a brilliant, all-consuming light, not just a star, like the prophets and the fathers of our people, like King David the writer of true songs, or Moses, who met the brightness of God in the desert. We needed those stars while we walked in darkness, and by them we steer our way through the wilderness of living. But when the sun rises? There will be a day, I know it in the very blood of my own body, when this child will be the one who dawns upon the earth, the sun of righteousness that Malachi spoke of, who will rise with healing in His wings. And then we will be healed. But now I wait, under the stars, and count down the months till he shall come.

Through the Window

I am old now, but my body carries the years lightly, because I have always been careful. I was only a little girl when my father died, and my mother went crazy with grief. “Keep your heart safe,” she screamed at me one day, “or someone will take it and smash it into little pieces.” I was frightened of her pain, so I took her advice. I needed to keep safe, so I made a resolution then and there that I would not let myself get too involved with anything. If my heart needed solace, I would find it in dreams. Dreams are safe, I can control dreams. As for the rest of life? I shall watch it from a safe distance – through the window.

And so I have lived. I have sufficient to manage comfortably, I have my interests, I have my work, I have my comforts. Books and poetry and music have their place, too, though I have always thought some of the most popular ones were very overrated. So much ill-judged emotion and unnecessary tragedy! So silly! I am quiet, I am dignified, and I keep my own counsel. I have pleasant social exchanges with the tradesmen and the neighbours. I am not inhuman. I go to church when convenient, I give a little to charity, I behave like a responsible citizen. But I have never seen any reason to get embroiled with the messiness of life, tragedy and comedy and ill-disciplined emotions are for fools. I stand back and merely watch – through the window.

Sometimes I have been tempted to break my own rules. Once a little boy was knocked down right outside my house, and his mother knelt beside him in the gutter, soaked with blood and mud, and screamed. I nearly went outside to her it looked so dreadful, and she sounded so pitiful. But what could I have done? And besides, it was raining. So I shut the window and watched through it.

Another time, a long war ended in victory, and the people were dancing in the streets. There was spontaneous singing, and people catching the hands of total strangers and twirling around. Their joy looked so intoxicating I was tempted to join them. But – intoxicating? That was precisely the problem. There were bottles being passed around, and people growing flushed. Who knew where it would end? Besides, I never learned to dance. So, even though the music made my feet itch and twitch, I stayed inside and watched through the window.

Further back, long ago when I was young and my mirror said I was pretty, there was a young man who started to come calling. At first it was all very flattering, and I was quite enjoying his attentions, until I realised he was serious. At that moment something froze inside me. I remembered my mother, and her pain, and I knew that love hurts. Far easier to stay safe. So I told him no, and a grey melancholy settled inside me as I watched through the window as he walked away.

I have been safe. I have been careful. I have kept my hands clean and my heart intact. And I never knew that my soul was dying of starvation – until last night. Can a dream change a person? It must have been a dream, because I was asleep, but it still seems so real it could have happened in this room.

In my dream (for what else can I call it?) a king was riding into town, and the people in the street were shouting and dancing, just like they did at the end of the war. I think it was the end of some kind of war. I was, of course, watching through the window, safe and distant as always. But then he stopped, right outside my window, and in a loud voice he called my name and ordered me to come forth. And, to my own amazement, I wanted to come. Who could refuse that voice? But I couldn’t. I tried to lift the sash, but it held fast, and I hurt myself trying. All the time he sat there, on his horse, looking straight at me, waiting .. So I decided to smash the glass, and get out that way. But the glass had grown thick and hard with the weight of years, and though I threw everything I had at it, nothing would break it. In the end I pounded my bruised fists against it and cried. The King himself was waiting for me and I could not come. In the end, feeble and defeated, not caring how silly I sounded, I cried out to him to help me.

And he did. He threw his whole body at the glass, and it shattered, though, as he did so, he was impaled upon a jagged piece of glass. There was so much blood, all over me, but I never even noticed. All that mattered was the king. But then, in a long moment, strong arms grasped me and lifted me through the window. In his arms I was safe in the unsafe world.

I thought it was a dream. But when I rose this morning the window was flung wide, and the perfume of strange flowers is blowing through the window.